Advocacy & Issues

Cal Chamber Conference Call Notes 4/29/10

AB 2774 (Committee on Labor and Employment)
Committee on Labor and Employment occupational safety spot bill (To be heard on May 5)

AB 1604 (Nava)
Gas Price Increase – Increases gas prices and dependence on foreign oil by targeting the oil industry for a tax on oil extracted only in California. (To be heard on May 10)

AB 2492 (Ammiano)
Higher Employer Property Taxes – Could dramatically increase the cost of doing business in California for both business property owners and their business tenants and in turn chill investments, jobs, and the economy by removing Proposition 13 protections from business property owners and imposing a volatile, arbitrary system of increasing their property taxes, including a rebuttable presumption that every three years business properties have changed ownership and need to be reassessed. (To be heard on May 10)

SB 1474 (Steinberg)
Increased Agricultural Costs – Undermines the process that now guarantees, through secret-ballot elections, a fair vote and the expression of agricultural employees’ true sentiments on the selection of a collective bargaining representative. This act will hurt California’s businesses by driving up costs, making employers less competitive in a global market. (To be heard on May 3)

SUPPORTED

AB 2561 (Villines)
Streamlining Energy Oversight – Streamlines government by consolidating the state’s various commissions, divisions, authorities, offices and departments with responsibility for energy policy into a new California Department of Energy (CDOE). (To be heard next week)

AB 2769 (Committee on Utilities and Commission)
Provides oversight and accountability by requiring that the President of the Public Utilities Commission appear before members of the legislature to provide them with a full report and update of the commission’s annual work plan. (To be heard next week)

There are still spots opens for the 2010 Business Summit May 17 -18 at the Sacramento Convention Center